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The Bible has the Lord speaking to Moses and informing him that owls are unclean, that they should not be eaten by man. The Babylonians saw them as harbingers of imminent destruction because of their liking for ruins.

The Greeks were thankfully a little more owl-centric and named Athene, their wise warrior goddess, after the owl. In turn the little owl was named after her. Not because she was little, it's the scientific name Athene noctua!

The Romans had them up as witches and their screeches foretold of death. Apparently a whole stack of owls kicked off the night before Caesar's assassination. Arabs once believe that owls represented the souls of unavenged dead and any number of poets have portrayed them as sad, solemn or cursed creatures. Shakespeare's witches added .

That said, it was believed they also had curative qualities. Owl broth cured whooping cough and eggs ended drunkenness. Sadly not enough clutches are laid these days to put an end to binge drinking!

Bats... Again associates of witches and therefore evil. They're most famed, of course, as blood-sucking vampires in myths from Eastern Europe. What's curious about this is that these myths arose long before the discovery of the real .

If bats were escaping from the poor PR of the Middle Ages (as cats have, please note) then Bram Stoker's novel from 1897 put a stake through their reputation. Bats were now sinister things that entangled themselves in the hair of women and children. In 1959 an experiment was conducted which apparently 'proved' that bats could disentangle quite well if previously tangled (presumably against their will). The '50s eh!

Quite what evolutionary, behavioural or ecological advantage could possibly be gained by getting in hair is anyone's guess.

Sadly, I still meet people genuinely frightened of bats. They usually cite bats' fast and unpredictable flight as the reason for their mistrust. Blimey, when I was eight I'd have been the happiest boy in Britain if a flock of noctules had come to my chamber. I'd have been furiously trying to entangle them in my butterfly net (not illegal then, of course).

Badgers too have been blighted with tales of misdeed: a badger crossing your intended path (that's death); a badger call followed by an owl's hoot (double death); a badger breaking into your bedroom spraying machine gun bullets (probable death, but more likely too much cheese before turning in).

Let's face it, the very simple reason all these and many more animals have inspired such a poor reputation is their straightforward . Even now we struggle to delve into their private lives, so it's easy to see how they were so unknowable in the past. Fear arises from the unknown. What is surprising is how long such mistrust persists in the modern world. We are funny old things we humans... we can't let go of the lore.